The team behind the hugely entertaining Fish Story are set to unleash a multi-layered look into life on a Japanese council estate. Yoshihiro Nakamura is one of the rare examples of directors that can make entertaining films from very complex and intelligent stories. See You Tomorrow, Everyone is another great example of multi-layered stories mixed with interesting characters in a very entertaining setting. Starring Gaku Hamada (Sake Bomb, Fish Story), Kento Nagayama (Shield of Straw, Crime or Punishment?!?) & Nene Ohtsuka (I Wish, The Foreign Duck The Native Duck & God in a Coin Locker), See You Tomorrow, Everyone is yours to own on U.K. DVD from October 14th, 2013, courtesy of Third Window Films. Synopsis: Gaku Hamada is Satoru, a simple boy who lives in a government-built estate where he is told that life is so perfect that he never wants to leave. The estate has everything one needs for a happy life; schools,...
- 9/5/2013
- 24framespersecond.net
Forget all those phoney Oscar-bait films – this complex, delicate drama about two young boys living through their parents' split is the real deal, and deeply satisfying
• Watch Peter on this week's Guardian Film Show
One of the year's best films has arrived quietly, unnoticed by the awards-season cheerleaders, but with its delicacy and complexity, it puts the Oscar-bait to shame. Hirokazu Koreeda's I Wish has taken two years to come to the UK. It has been more than worth the wait. Like his earlier movie Still Walking, this is a deeply considered Japanese family drama in the tradition of Ozu, with echoes of Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang – moving, sometimes heartbreakingly sad, often mysterious. The film is about the powerful imperative of family unity, but also about the inevitability, and even desirability, of families finally disintegrating and allowing everyone involved a painful kind of freedom.
The original title is Kiseki,...
• Watch Peter on this week's Guardian Film Show
One of the year's best films has arrived quietly, unnoticed by the awards-season cheerleaders, but with its delicacy and complexity, it puts the Oscar-bait to shame. Hirokazu Koreeda's I Wish has taken two years to come to the UK. It has been more than worth the wait. Like his earlier movie Still Walking, this is a deeply considered Japanese family drama in the tradition of Ozu, with echoes of Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang – moving, sometimes heartbreakingly sad, often mysterious. The film is about the powerful imperative of family unity, but also about the inevitability, and even desirability, of families finally disintegrating and allowing everyone involved a painful kind of freedom.
The original title is Kiseki,...
- 2/8/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck & The God In A Coin Locker
Stars: Gaku Hamada, Eita, Megumi Seki, Kei Tamura, Nene Ohtsuka | Written by Yoshihiro Nakamura, Ken’ichi Suzuki | Directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura
There are some film titles that just make you think, they aim to confuse you and offer no explanation as to what they mean. A prime example is The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck & God in a Coin Locker. It’s not until you get to the end of the film and take in the full story that you truly understand the concept and realise what a good film this is.
Shiina (Gaku Hamada) is moving into the city to be a student and moves into an apartment building. Upon meeting his neighbour Kawasaki (Eita) they soon find friendship through their mutual love of Bob Dylan. Feeling like an outside in the city Shiina is taken under...
Stars: Gaku Hamada, Eita, Megumi Seki, Kei Tamura, Nene Ohtsuka | Written by Yoshihiro Nakamura, Ken’ichi Suzuki | Directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura
There are some film titles that just make you think, they aim to confuse you and offer no explanation as to what they mean. A prime example is The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck & God in a Coin Locker. It’s not until you get to the end of the film and take in the full story that you truly understand the concept and realise what a good film this is.
Shiina (Gaku Hamada) is moving into the city to be a student and moves into an apartment building. Upon meeting his neighbour Kawasaki (Eita) they soon find friendship through their mutual love of Bob Dylan. Feeling like an outside in the city Shiina is taken under...
- 1/18/2013
- by Pzomb
- Nerdly
The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck & God in a Coin Locker
A film by Yoshihiro Nakamura (Fish Story, Golden Slumber)
Starring: Eita (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Memories of Matsuko)
Gaku Hamada (Fish Story, Space Brothers)
Ryuhei Matsuda (Nightmare Detective, Blue Spring, Gohatto)
Japan / 2007 / 110 Mins / In Japanese with English subtitles / Colour / 35mm
Out on DVD January 11th, 2013
DVD Special Features:
35 minute ‘Making Of’, Deleted Scenes, Theatrical Trailer
College student Shiina (Gaku Hamada from Fish Story) has just moved into his new flat in Sendai. Meets his new neighbour Kawasaki (Eita from Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai) Excluding both the tremendous physical and psychological differences between both characters, an unexpected friendships grows up out of a mutual interest in Bob Dylan.
The rigid and predictable Shiina is dragged by the magnetism of Kawasaki’s looney world of anarchy and creativity. Kawasaki’s crazy ideas, like his paranoia about pet...
A film by Yoshihiro Nakamura (Fish Story, Golden Slumber)
Starring: Eita (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Memories of Matsuko)
Gaku Hamada (Fish Story, Space Brothers)
Ryuhei Matsuda (Nightmare Detective, Blue Spring, Gohatto)
Japan / 2007 / 110 Mins / In Japanese with English subtitles / Colour / 35mm
Out on DVD January 11th, 2013
DVD Special Features:
35 minute ‘Making Of’, Deleted Scenes, Theatrical Trailer
College student Shiina (Gaku Hamada from Fish Story) has just moved into his new flat in Sendai. Meets his new neighbour Kawasaki (Eita from Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai) Excluding both the tremendous physical and psychological differences between both characters, an unexpected friendships grows up out of a mutual interest in Bob Dylan.
The rigid and predictable Shiina is dragged by the magnetism of Kawasaki’s looney world of anarchy and creativity. Kawasaki’s crazy ideas, like his paranoia about pet...
- 12/23/2012
- by tealgranate
- AsianMoviePulse
Title: I Wish Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda Starring: Koki Maeda, Ohshiro Maeda, Nene Ohtsuka, Joe Odagiri, Kirin Kiki If Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne were Japanese instead of French-Belgian, or perhaps set out to craft a homage to Yasujiro Ozu that was crossed with a sort of whimsical yet melancholic version of “The Parent Trap,” it might well resemble “I Wish,” writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest effort. A tender but yawning story of childhood desires and maturation, the movie features some superlative adolescent performances, but also seems a bit caught up in its own relaxed rhythms and beatific point-of-view. A premiere at last fall’s Toronto Film Festival that was recently featured as part [ Read More ]...
- 5/16/2012
- by bsimon
- ShockYa
Isaki Lacuesta's The Double Steps has won the Golden Shell for Best Film at this year's San Sebastián Film Festival. Ronald Bergan will be pleased. In his dispatch from the festival to the House Next Door, he calls it "the best film in the main competition. It was certainly the most original and a refreshing change from the well-worn linear narrative devices of the majority of films. After 2002's Cravan vs. Cravan, his profile of Arthur Cravan, the Swiss-born nephew of Oscar Wilde who achieved fame as both a Dadaist poet and boxer, Lacuesta has now turned to Francois Augièras, the eccentric French writer, painter and explorer, and sometime lover of André Gide. The film follows two parallel lines, one about a group of men trying to locate a mythical bunker buried in the North African desert containing paintings by Augièras, and the other about the artist himself, here played by a black African,...
- 9/27/2011
- MUBI
In Julie Delpy's Skylab and Hirokazu Kore-eda's I Wish, the festival featured two sharply contrasting family dramas
Two of the best films at San Sebastián were family dramas — different kinds of family, different kinds of drama.
Julie Delpy's Skylab is her third feature film as a director, and it confirms her as a natural film-maker. This is a nostalgic period piece about a family party in 1979, inspired by Delpy's own memories: it was a time in which the French public became briefly convulsed by a spasm of anxiety over news reports that Nasa's Skylab research rocket, then descending to earth from its space orbit, was going to crash in western France.
Delpy also stars, in the unglamorous role of Anna, a harassed mother married to Jean (Eric Elmosnino). They are bringing the kids to their grandma's lovely ramshackle house in Brittany for a colossal family party. What...
Two of the best films at San Sebastián were family dramas — different kinds of family, different kinds of drama.
Julie Delpy's Skylab is her third feature film as a director, and it confirms her as a natural film-maker. This is a nostalgic period piece about a family party in 1979, inspired by Delpy's own memories: it was a time in which the French public became briefly convulsed by a spasm of anxiety over news reports that Nasa's Skylab research rocket, then descending to earth from its space orbit, was going to crash in western France.
Delpy also stars, in the unglamorous role of Anna, a harassed mother married to Jean (Eric Elmosnino). They are bringing the kids to their grandma's lovely ramshackle house in Brittany for a colossal family party. What...
- 9/21/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
A trailer has been released for Itsumichi Isomura‘s Matataki, the latest film from the in-house production and distribution company of the utterly stacked talent agency Stardust Promotion.
Based on a novel by Len Kawahara, the film stars Keiko Kitagawa as Izumi, a young woman who’s blissfully in love with her art student boyfriend, Junichi (Masaki Okada). One day while returning from a trip to view the cherry blossoms, their bike collides with a truck inside a tunnel, with only Izumi surviving the accident. However, the incident is so traumatizing to Izumi that the memory of it has been completely blocked out of her mind. Overcome with sorrow and wondering why she was the only one to survive, Izumi seizes the chance to piece it all together with the help of a lawyer named Makiko (Nene Otsuka). Despite her fear, Izumi is determined to unlock the memory of her final moments with Junichi.
Based on a novel by Len Kawahara, the film stars Keiko Kitagawa as Izumi, a young woman who’s blissfully in love with her art student boyfriend, Junichi (Masaki Okada). One day while returning from a trip to view the cherry blossoms, their bike collides with a truck inside a tunnel, with only Izumi surviving the accident. However, the incident is so traumatizing to Izumi that the memory of it has been completely blocked out of her mind. Overcome with sorrow and wondering why she was the only one to survive, Izumi seizes the chance to piece it all together with the help of a lawyer named Makiko (Nene Otsuka). Despite her fear, Izumi is determined to unlock the memory of her final moments with Junichi.
- 3/18/2010
- Nippon Cinema
[Our thanks to Christopher Bourne for the following review.]
Hajime Kadoi’s contemplative second feature Vacation explores the relationship between Toru (Kaoru Kobayashi), a prison guard at a high-security facility, and Kaneda (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a condemned prisoner soon to be executed for murder, who has spent most of his years in prison appealing to the authorities for clemency. The “vacation” of the title is granted to Toru for volunteering for the traumatic task of assisting in Kaneda’s execution by leading him to the death chamber and holding his legs as he is hanged. Making this much harder for Toru is the fact that he has developed an unexpressed fondness for this quiet prisoner, who spends his days in his immaculately furnished cell drawing in his sketchbook. For his efforts, Toru is given a week off to have a brief honeymoon with his new bride, divorced single mother Mika (Nene Otsuka), accompanied by her young son Tatsuya (Shusei Ito...
Hajime Kadoi’s contemplative second feature Vacation explores the relationship between Toru (Kaoru Kobayashi), a prison guard at a high-security facility, and Kaneda (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a condemned prisoner soon to be executed for murder, who has spent most of his years in prison appealing to the authorities for clemency. The “vacation” of the title is granted to Toru for volunteering for the traumatic task of assisting in Kaneda’s execution by leading him to the death chamber and holding his legs as he is hanged. Making this much harder for Toru is the fact that he has developed an unexpressed fondness for this quiet prisoner, who spends his days in his immaculately furnished cell drawing in his sketchbook. For his efforts, Toru is given a week off to have a brief honeymoon with his new bride, divorced single mother Mika (Nene Otsuka), accompanied by her young son Tatsuya (Shusei Ito...
- 7/3/2009
- by Todd Brown
- Screen Anarchy
Bashing
Iraq is never mentioned in Masahiro Kobayashi's In Competition drama Bashing, but that war-torn nation lurks like an open sore beside his absorbing look at the alienation of a young Japanese woman whose misadventures there cause her to be reviled when she returns home.
Based on an actual event, the film tells of Yuko (Fusako Urabe), who went to the Middle East as a volunteer for a charitable organization but was kidnapped and taken hostage. Returning to Japan upon her release, Yuko finds herself the subject of harassment and abuse from friends and strangers.
Kobayashi has created memorable characters aided greatly by fine acting from the entire cast, but the film falls short of its powerful potential due to a lack of essential information. It might be apt to be opaque about Yuko's hostage experience but a better account of why her release should cause such widespread revulsion in her native land absolutely requires being made clear.
As it is, moviegoers in other lands will remain mystified as the film has too many unanswered questions and will most likely leave audiences dissatisfied.
The title itself needs explaining as Yuko is "bashed" by people for having survived her ordeal. One explains that she would have been a heroine had she been killed but her survival has made her an embarrassment to all of Japan. Why, we never learn.
We first see the elfin but serious-minded Yuko six months back in her homeland working as a hotel cleaner. It's quickly established that her colleagues won't speak to her and before the day is out, she has been fired.
Picking up food from a store near her home, she is assaulted by three young louts who stomp her takeaway meal into the ground. At home with her sympathetic father (Ryuzo Tanaka) and gracious stepmother (Nene Otsuka), Yuko suffers through abusive phone messages, and even her family doesn't know what to say to her.
Difficulties escalate as the young woman's boyfriend (Takayuki Kato) coldly dumps her and the managers at her father's factory complain about damage to the company's reputation.
The film has a generally drab look, and Kobayashi indulges in too many extended scenes marked only by an absence of drama. But he builds an effective element of dread so that merely carrying a food package upstairs in an apartment building becomes suspenseful.
It would be a disappointment, however, if the director merely intends a blanket indictment of Japan as a closed, small-minded and intolerant society. Bashing is a relatively short film, and it would have benefited greatly from a wider perspective.
In the end, the picture impresses thanks to powerful acting from Urabe, Tanaka and Otsuka in particular, as well as some gripping monologs on love and loss, and the rewards to be found in helping the less fortunate far away.
BASHING
Monkey Town Prods.
Credits: Director, screenwriter: Masahiro Kobayashi; Producers: Masahiro Kobayashi, Naoko Okamura; Cinematographer: Koichi Saitoh; Editor: Naoki Kaneko; Music: Hiroshi Hayashi. Cast: Yuko: Fusako Urabe; Her father: Ryuzo Tanaka; Her lover: Takayuki Kato; Father's boss: Kikujiro Honda; Hotel owner: Teruyuki Kagawa; Stepmother: Nene Otsuka.
No MPAA rating, running time: 82 minutes...
Based on an actual event, the film tells of Yuko (Fusako Urabe), who went to the Middle East as a volunteer for a charitable organization but was kidnapped and taken hostage. Returning to Japan upon her release, Yuko finds herself the subject of harassment and abuse from friends and strangers.
Kobayashi has created memorable characters aided greatly by fine acting from the entire cast, but the film falls short of its powerful potential due to a lack of essential information. It might be apt to be opaque about Yuko's hostage experience but a better account of why her release should cause such widespread revulsion in her native land absolutely requires being made clear.
As it is, moviegoers in other lands will remain mystified as the film has too many unanswered questions and will most likely leave audiences dissatisfied.
The title itself needs explaining as Yuko is "bashed" by people for having survived her ordeal. One explains that she would have been a heroine had she been killed but her survival has made her an embarrassment to all of Japan. Why, we never learn.
We first see the elfin but serious-minded Yuko six months back in her homeland working as a hotel cleaner. It's quickly established that her colleagues won't speak to her and before the day is out, she has been fired.
Picking up food from a store near her home, she is assaulted by three young louts who stomp her takeaway meal into the ground. At home with her sympathetic father (Ryuzo Tanaka) and gracious stepmother (Nene Otsuka), Yuko suffers through abusive phone messages, and even her family doesn't know what to say to her.
Difficulties escalate as the young woman's boyfriend (Takayuki Kato) coldly dumps her and the managers at her father's factory complain about damage to the company's reputation.
The film has a generally drab look, and Kobayashi indulges in too many extended scenes marked only by an absence of drama. But he builds an effective element of dread so that merely carrying a food package upstairs in an apartment building becomes suspenseful.
It would be a disappointment, however, if the director merely intends a blanket indictment of Japan as a closed, small-minded and intolerant society. Bashing is a relatively short film, and it would have benefited greatly from a wider perspective.
In the end, the picture impresses thanks to powerful acting from Urabe, Tanaka and Otsuka in particular, as well as some gripping monologs on love and loss, and the rewards to be found in helping the less fortunate far away.
BASHING
Monkey Town Prods.
Credits: Director, screenwriter: Masahiro Kobayashi; Producers: Masahiro Kobayashi, Naoko Okamura; Cinematographer: Koichi Saitoh; Editor: Naoki Kaneko; Music: Hiroshi Hayashi. Cast: Yuko: Fusako Urabe; Her father: Ryuzo Tanaka; Her lover: Takayuki Kato; Father's boss: Kikujiro Honda; Hotel owner: Teruyuki Kagawa; Stepmother: Nene Otsuka.
No MPAA rating, running time: 82 minutes...
- 5/18/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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